After a (largely unplanned) holiday hiatus, I’m back into the swing of things with my week in review posts. This gives me a good reason to post on a semi-regular basis (I am horrible at anything more frequent when it comes to long-format blog posts, although my microblogging on Twitter is generally pretty robust), and it allows me a chance to consider what has been really important in the past week of digital. So, without further ado, here are my picks for the week of 1/11/10 – 1/15/10.
Google vs. China
Google was slammed by the US press when they agreed to censor content based on the laws of the Chinese government (background info here). Many commentators saw this as a direct violation of Google’s “don’t be evil” motto.
Why does the Chinese government’s policy towards censorship qualify as evil? Check out the content they consider objectionable. It’s insane and also a bit funny – I understand why they blog searches for “TiananmenSquare” (evil though it is), but YTMND? Really?
This week Google abruptly reversed their policy, after Gmail was hacked. The implication (although Google has not yet said so explicitly) is that the Chinese government was behind the hacking (the US government is planning to investigate). Google has temporarily closed its operations in China and given all its employees holiday leave.
“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.” – Google Blog
China’s response to Google is basically: if you don’t abide by our laws, leave. This is still playing out, and it could have interesting implications for how global technology will affect individual freedoms.
Conan vs. Leno
Another smackdown that’s happening online is the controversy between Conan O’Brien and NBC over the shifting of his time slot to accommodate Jay Leno. What’s interesting about this is how Conan (definitely the underdog in this situation) has played his hand entirely transparently and online. First, he released an intelligent, respectful letter explaining why he couldn’t agree with NBC’s decision. This letter was widely reported on online and garnered Conan a ton of support, including a popular “I’M WITH COCO” movement launched on Facebook. Next, Conan began using the situation as fodder for his show, with digital tie-ins: a joke that he had listed his show on Craigslist turned out to be real.
So far, NBC has appeared to be entirely dumb and blind to these rumblings, which suggests either enormous incompetency or that Jeff Zucker’s campaign against Conan might be personal.
From a digital media perspective, it will be interesting to see if the groundswell online has any long-term implications for NBC.
How is the internet changing the way you think?
2010 Trends in Digital Marketing
When I last wrote, I mentioned that I was working on a deck that describes what trends I think will be critical in online advertising/ marketing for 2010. I haven’t forgotten about it, but in typical fashion, I’ve made it a bigger project than I initially anticipated. It really will be coming out soon, probably next week.
